Catasauqua’s Lexi Rushatz understood that this was a different cross country season this fall.

She also realized a return trip to states for her senior year would be a tough task.

“I was happy on how I ran at leagues, but I thought I could have done a little bit better (at districts),” said Rushatz, who recently finished 25th with a time of 23:56 at the District 11 meet. “Overall, it wasn’t too bad, and it would have been good to have gone to states.

“We moved up to Double A and knew that would be a challenge, and the course we ran is one that we haven’t seen.”

Rushatz led the Rough Riders’ girls unit that finished 11 of 13 teams in the bracket. She was followed by teammates junior Lucy Brubaker (43rd, 25:32), freshman Alivia Bear (45th, 25:33) senior Breonna Brinkley (56th, 26:30), sophomore Kaylee Weidaw (59th, 26:50), and junior Ashley Ritter (63rd, 27:22) in the field of 79 female runners.

Junior Cole Brown paced the boys’ with a 70th-place finish in a time of 22:27. He was followed by senior Luke Colon (73, 22:44), senior Dorian Hoagland (77, 22:55), senior Angel Font (92nd, 24:18) and junior Jaryn Hartranft (25:39). The boys were 16th out of 17 teams in the district.

Head coach Kyle Rusnock liked his team’s performance.

“I thought it went well,” said Rusnock. “I thought we did a decent job. Both teams were in a tough bracket moving up to Double A. We’ll have a core of four girls back for next year, and we are losing three boys who normally score for us.

“Lexi will be a tough runner to replace, but we have a lot of good young runners who will improve. I was just glad to get the season in. Under the circumstances, I thought we did a good job.”

Rushatz is anxious for the track season that was shutdown last year due to COVID-19. She plans to keep running over the winter, and likely will run some 5Ks in the area.

“I’ll keep running outside unless it gets too cold,” she said. “If it does, I have a program that I do on the treadmill.

“I’ll keep an eye out and try to run in some races around Thanksgiving and Christmas.”